


Appearances

by 13thSyndicate



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: F/M, Fluff, musing on Xion, oh the fluff, tastes like diabetes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 00:58:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4459232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13thSyndicate/pseuds/13thSyndicate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Oh my god this gave me feels and I'm dying because Ven and Xion are still in character limbo. And I made up this OTP and now I can't sleep because I'm so obsessed -sob- I need this in my life so bad.</p><p>They're just so similar and I just and then Xion needs her own face and then I had this idea where Ven gave her one and oh god my feels I can't type coherently because I gave them to myself.</p></blockquote>





	Appearances

“Hey, Xion.”

She looked up at the blonde-haired boy sitting next to her, his legs dangling from the side of the clock tower where they sat. Their ice cream sticks, a tradition she'd introduced him to from the paradise days she'd spent with her friends, were long since licked clean of the sticky treat they'd once held. Neither stick was a Winner – but that was alright.

He looked almost exactly like that friend of hers, the one who'd chased her down, the one who she'd had to betray, in the end – their senses of fashion and the clothes they wore were even almost the same. But he wasn't that friend. She smiled.

“What is it, Ven?”

“Is it true?” he asked. “That... you look different to everyone who sees you.”

She looked ahead, her expression clouding over as she stared at the orange-and-red skyline behind her. For a moment, she wanted to be back in her old cloak, the one with the hood she could use to hide her treacherous face. The light summer dress they'd given her, while a treasure, had no means with which to hide.

“...that's right,” she said. “When Sora and Roxas look at me, I look like Kairi, except with black hair. When Lea sees me, I look like Namine. When Xigbar used to look at me... he saw someone else. A boy.” She frowned. “....you, I think. He always did say Roxas and I... looked too much alike. And when Sora's memories began to fill me... I looked like him.”

Ven frowned. It wasn't an expression that really looked right no him – he always seemed so much more at ease when he was happy than when he was sad or worried.

“So... you don't even have your own face?” he asked. She shook her head.

“No...I'm just a puppet. I don't even know how Sora managed to rescue me... I shouldn't exist anymore. I was made to be a copy, to reflect the memories around me. That I have even part of a heart of my own...” She pressed her hand to her chest, trying to feel the elusive beating within. “It's a fluke. Something that was never supposed to happen.”

Ven reached out a hand and put it on her shoulder, and she looked up, only to meet his smiling blue eyes.

“I don't think it's a fluke,” he said, honestly, because he never said anything any other way. “I think it's a miracle. Having a heart, when you're not supposed to... it's an amazing thing. Because without a heart, you could never have friends, right?”

She felt a smile creeping up on her face.

“You're too kind, Ven... even if I don't think I deserve it. I almost got Roxas killed.”

He shook his head. “You did what you thought was right, no matter what. I just wish you could've done what was right for you, too.”

He looked away from her for a moment, staring out into the sunset.

“Xion,” he asked, “how do you see yourself?”

She blinked.

“W-what do you mean?”

“If you don't have any true face... when you look in the mirror, what do you see?”

She frowned herself, then, following his gaze back to the horizon.

“I... I don't know. It's always different... whatever the nearest person to me is seeing, I guess? And when no one else is around... I don't look in mirrors much. I used to see the same person Roxas does... a black-haired version of Kairi. Small, with blue eyes, short hair... but when I started to learn who and what I was...”

Her fists clenched.

“Ever since then, I see a doll. Blue glass eyes with no life in them, the puppet I am.” Her voice was bitter but she had long since accepted her true identity. “In the end, even I started to see Sora, a little bit. But now...”

She shrugged.

“Now, I just don't look in mirrors.”

“What do you want to look like?”

Again, she looked up at him in surprise, but for the first time ever, she couldn't read his face.

“What do you mean, what do I want?”

He looked at her. “I mean... if you could look like anything. Just one thing. What would you look like? Would you look like Kairi, or... what?”

She frowned. “I used to see myself as the black-haired Kairi, yes... that used to be what I felt I should look like. But now... I don't really know.” A strange thought crossed her mind. “What do I look like to you, Ven? Who do you see me as?”

“Me?” he asked.

“Yes... you. Do I look like Aqua, to you? Or Terra?”

“No,” he said, and she stared at him. “You've never looked like anyone to me, really. You've... always just looked like Xion.”

“Huh?”

“I mean... your eyes. They're blue, but they have other colors in them, too, just like Aqua's. Your hair isn't short, but it's not long, either – it goes to your shoulders, a little like Kairi's but it's not the same thing. It's feathery and fine and catches the wind and looks really cute. You're not old enough to be Aqua; about Kairi's age, maybe? But you're taller than her. Maybe it's because I don't really have any memories to thrust on you – or maybe you're just a composite of a lot of memories combined. I don't really know.” He shook his head. “But you've always just looked like Xion, to me. And... if you want to look like Kairi again, I would be okay with that. You're your own person now – Xion is Xion, no matter what she looks like, right?”

He gave a soft, embarrassed smile.

“But... I feel like... the way I see you fits you best because you're not Kairi or Aqua or Namine or me or Sora or Terra or anyone like that... you're Xion. And... if you wanted... to see yourself the way I see you... I guess that would... would... make me really happy!”

He wasn't looking at her, and his cheeks were red, and she felt her half-existent heart beat faster under her fingertips. Her face opened up into a smile, an honest, open smile for the first time since those long-ago days she'd shared with Roxas and Axel on top of this very clock tower, and she reached out, self-consciously, to put a hand on his shoulder.

“I'd be honored,” she said, “to claim such a fitting appearance as my own.”

He laughed, also self-consciously. “Hey, now – you're just teasing me, aren't you?”

“Maaaaybe,” she said, climbing to her feet and offering him a hand – which he took, with only the slightest hesitation, and used to help himself to his feet.

“Stop making fun of me, Xion!”

“I'll stop when you stop being so easy to tease!”

“Oh, thanks!”

Laughing, they climbed down the clock tower together, still teasing and ribbing at each other.

That night, though, before she went to sleep, she glanced in the mirror Kairi had given her to hang in her room – and saw looking back at her a girl with black, feathery hair, and eyes that held all the colors of the sea in their depths.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my god this gave me feels and I'm dying because Ven and Xion are still in character limbo. And I made up this OTP and now I can't sleep because I'm so obsessed -sob- I need this in my life so bad.
> 
> They're just so similar and I just and then Xion needs her own face and then I had this idea where Ven gave her one and oh god my feels I can't type coherently because I gave them to myself.


End file.
